Getting your film developed is why everyone moved to DSLR's and mirrorless. It's not so much that the newer digital cameras are better (they are), it's the fact that you don't have to wait 2 weeks for your photos.
I have Nikon SLR's that have been sitting in the bag for 20 years.
I have Cannon DSLR's that see light a couple times a year.
I have a GoPro that sees the abuse that an ex-skater, ex-snowboarder, ex-surfer, does to his equipment through no fault of his own.
My issue with film cameras even back in the 90s was the varying quality of film developers to get your photos and the turn around time. Not to mention the photo shop looking at all your photos.
Yeah I think photography is a good demonstration of how "practical" concerns are often stronger than the "performance" differences that enthusiasts instead focus on. Early digital cameras were, in a word, shit, yet they still had strong interest from consumers due to the "productivity" benefits. Once prices came down they quickly ate film market share, yet 35mm film arguably still had better image quality even in the mid-00s as the crossover point was reached. Though of course digital has now well overtaken film in IQ, it took longer than people remember, especially in the average consumer electronics sector
You don't necessarily need one for just developing the film - dark bag to load the film onto the spool which is lightfast and bob is your photographed uncle (source: me, having done this in very un-dark kitchen twice.)
I suppose if you want to make your own prints, that probably needs a darkroom but you can get a film scanner cheap and print them on a colour laser, inkjet, or even one of those Selphy dye subs in lieu of that.
This is what I have done. 35mm bw and color developed in a dark bag. Then scan the negatives. So much cheaper than actually having it developed professionally. You also get to mess with the development conditions for various effects.
I hear you. My process is cheapest, doesn’t require chemicals, can be done in sunlight, and with some glsl knowledge, essentially the same. Only digitally and for $0.000000001 an image.
Yeah, I do that too but since I'd never really owned a 35mm camera, I thought I'd give it a go ("how hard can it be?" "very if your spool is wet, you fool") and I've enjoyed the experience of taking my PEN-EE around and developing its weird little half-frame outputs.
B&W negatives are easy enough at home. Though you have to get them into a computer and, at that point, I'd sort of be "Why bother?" (other than a fun retro weekend project possibly). And, yes, printing requires an actual darkroom. After school, I quickly decided that setting something up in spare half-bathroom was for the birds.
Huge time sink for B&W, but sure nice to do, a major pain for color and close to impossible for slide film.
The latter was what I basically learned on, back the day, being allowed to sport my dad's back-up F4. Had to tie a knot in the sling for it to not bounce on the ground when I had it around my neck, me being too small.
Digital is so much easier, until you want to print. Upside of learbing on film, you are much more carefull at which pictures you take.
Maybe, one day, I'll get some B&W film and pull out said F4 again. Big maybe so, as I simply don't have the time to develop film on top of everything else...
Yeah, that's were becomes expensive again. Good foto printer either cost a fortune, a fortune for ink or both. Well, still cheaper than printing externally.
Printing well so seems to be a bit of an art so. Selecting the right paper for the printer and foto, doing some trails... A bit like developong and printing in a darkroom, from the looks of it. Not that I have a lot of experience, I need to save the money for the printer first...
Ink printers, where do I start, there’s only one style I can even recommend. Refillable. Forget HP, forget Canon, Brother, get yourself an Epson refillable. Obviously, laser is superior, but if you really want to keep costs down, Epson’s refillable inkjet printers are the only ones that don’t shutdown if you run out of black ink scent. It’s a racket and you should not participate in providing HP or any of those printer companies your money.
Top of my list is an Epson ET-8550, ticks all boxes except price. Followed by a Canon Pro-200, ticks all boxes except ink cost. The pigment printers are all too expensive, and the ink cost of the Epson cartridge models is prohibitive. Problem is that the break even for a ET-8550 is so far out that the Canon one is almost cheaper for the first 80-odd a3 prints. Well, maybe I find a deal for one or the other and the decision is met for me!
I think this advice may work for some, but for most I think advantages of digital far outweigh film, even for people just getting into the hobby. Chiefly, being able to make thousands of mistakes is not a bug, but a feature - you need to make mistakes in order to improve, and being able to make them quickly is a huge help. Secondly, digital cameras are so good now that you can just do so many more things than you can with film, like video, swapping quickly between light levels, extremely accurate autofocus, timelapses, astrophotography, etc.
A very restrictive medium can help spark creativity, but it may also prevent neophytes from finding it.
I spent a lot of time on B&W through school but dropped it once I didn't have access to a "real" darkroom any longer. (I had the equipment but I quickly decided setting it up in an apartment darkroom was for the birds and, even after I bought a house, didn't really have an appropriate space.
After that it was just color slides but it pretty much became just a trips and special events thing. I go in and out of using my interchangeable lens digital cameras but it's low friction enough if I want to pull them out.
The thing with the "real" camera sitting in the suitcase and the phone coming out for actual shooting has been a common trope for a while now. But phones have been around long enough that the difference between a DSLR with a good lens or two has become more well known. I have the latter and it certainly does not sit idle, even though it's over 15 years old by now. It has been such a liberating change coming from film - I used to stress out over every shot due to cost/not having enough film, that I missed many photo opportunities I don't think twice about with a DSLR.
p.s. I realize "DSLR" is not enough to refer to all digital cameras any more due to mirrorless cams, but I do mean to include those too :-)
I bought an old prosumer point and shoot recently to take some more thoughtful pictures. It's fairly limited by the CCD sensor at 12MP. My phone, a GS22, takes sharper pictures, automatically does the cool aperture settings for a foreground focus, blurry background, and other fancy things. But when you zoom in, there's a ton of terrible upscaling blur that sorta degrades the overall shot.
Additionally it just isn't that comfortable trying to shoot on a phone.
I'm in the school of thought that purposeful technology makes you think a lot more about the role of technology. I like using technology, I enjoy learning to use it like a tool. A too-good phone camera is great for reference shots, quick social media shots, etc, but isn't enjoyable at all when your goal is to take pictures for the sake of taking pictures.
Over-optimization really strips the joy out of life sometimes.
> automatically does the cool aperture settings for a foreground focus, blurry background, and other fancy things.
Its not actually doing any cool aperture settings, its faking it all with software. And depending on the software stack and the picture in question, it can do a pretty bad job at it. I do appreciate the effects at times and use them myself, but on many shots I'll notice the depth of field effects being used in places where it shouldn't like too far on the shoulders, turning the edges of someone's hair to mess, a secondary subject next to but just slightly behind the main subject getting radically out of the fake depth of field, etc.
Most of the photos I take day to day are on my phone's camera, for sure. But when I'm actually wanting to really take some pictures, I bust out an actual camera. My current main goto is my G9x Mark II, which is a lot of fun and can still send photos straight to my phone after shooting so I can easily send them to people right away.
Its basically the same problem, so much auto-processing is done to make pictures generally look good, so that so many intentional pictures just look disappointing.
Not wanting to carry an assortment of lenses with me, I have used bridge cameras for ages, and my current one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panasonic_Lumix_DMC-FZ1000) is pretty well-reviewed and generally does make really good photos, but my 6-year-old Pixel 2 phone still takes better HDR pictures. Sure, you can optimize what the FZ1000 does by adjusting the exposure time, but sometimes I just don't have the time to do that.
Not only do phones have the upscaling blur, there's also a telltale "painterly" sign of convolutional neural network based processing that I see everywhere now especially in Google products.
That's an interesting observation that human vision can make out detail from a noisy signal. Non-generative CNNs are typically going to filter noise due to the loss functions used. Generative models could in theory learn to recognize whatever signal in that noise humans are queuing on and guess at the missing content. I think there'd be resistance to generative models in photography pipelines though based on the "made-up pixels" argument.
I've shot tons of film over a great many years and I have a sizeable collection of cheap and expensive 35mm and 120mm film cameras covering the period from the late 1800's to the 1980's. I stuck to film well after digital cameras got cheap enough for my tastes and I still love to shoot film - I have about 25 rolls of exposed color film in my office waiting for me to develop, so I still shoot a fair amount on film. I also feel more of a connection to my film cameras since they have a personal history and are works of art.
One regret I have about the film era is that, starting out as a teenager, I scraped to afford film and, recently, it struck me how large the gap is between the memories I have now and the memories I captured on film back then. Once I had a job and could afford to take more photos, I seemed to have decided that photography was for travel and special occasions and I, sadly, took photos of little else.
Now I shoot a full-frame mirrorless digital (mostly so I can use my old lenses and also, I hate cell-phone photography ergonomics). I carry my camera everywhere and shoot quite a few photos on any given day. I am learning so much more about photography now that I can freely experiment and the equipment allows me to capture things that were only rarely possible before.
That being said, I encourage everyone to try film for whatever reasons strikes your fancy. The more people into film, the more options we'll have for film stock, chemicals, and cameras.
This is also really common in the audio space. Sampling, amp modelers, etc. are really great for rapidly prototyping without either requiring the full band or a money/time sink to get the right sound.
Personally, I don't shoot enough to justify new equipment. Photography is a minor hobby of mine, and I actually really enjoy the limitations of film. Just the other day I was on shot 33 of my last 35mm roll. It hits a bit different to say "well, I've got three shots left, I better make them count." I was doing a shoot with some friends and another photographer was there shooting on continuous, snapping a dozen frames while I took one. Their shots were partially edited by the end of the night and I'm trying to find time to get to the lab.
It's just a different experience. Like I said, I like the limitation that requires more planning and intention. Things don't always work out. I'll have a whole roll that's massively under or overexposed. I'll have rolls that never loaded properly and get nothing but a clear negative after development. It's all part of the story for me.
Would you mind going into a bit more detail about your late 1800s-early 1900s cameras? I’ve recently gotten into film photography, first with a cheap, slightly broken AE-1 and more recently with a family member’s passed-down Canon F-1. Even though this equipment is more than sufficient, I find myself lusting after 1930s-1940s Barnack Leicas and the wide array of Barnack clones from that era. I’m curious what it’s like to actually shoot with those cameras.
It used to be worth it, maybe in the early to mid 10s when the pros switched to digital and film stock was dirt cheap. But now a single roll of Portra is like $25 and even a mediocre rangefinder is $400. Nowadays, when I see someone shooting film -- I think hipster with more money than sense.
The benefit now is that nice digital DSLRs and their lenses are cheap. You can pick up a nice used a6000 with kit lens for less than the total out of pocket cost of 100 film photographs.
The cost per shot of film adds up quickly, and I'm always sure to emphasize that to friends who ask about film photography as a cheap option, but the price of the cameras seems exaggerated to me, especially given how much a used DSLR or mirrorless of equal "reputation" would cost. If you're buying one of the iconic cameras, or whatever one the "influencers" have declared a "hidden gem" this week then sure, but there's plenty of good used SLRs and point-and-shoots to be bought for comfortably under $100 (perhaps rangefinders are harder to find cheap, I've never looked). And of course there's no image sensor to differentiate the price, so a top-of-the-range SLR and a cheap one with the same lens mount should theoretically take equivalent images
I kind of think to myself, “Is this picture worth a dollar?”
I don't shoot film anymore since about 15 years, it's totally not worth the hassle. However, I did stick to this mindset of first trying to figure out whether it's worth it overall and only then taking a picture (except when shooting plants/insects for later determination etc, then different metrics come into play). It has a lot of advantages for me, mainly because I really despise what the OP also does (shooting pretty much everything, taking x rounds of the same scene then figuring out the best one). Instead I end up with a sort of pre-curated list and then go through it once to delete what wasn't a good shot or turned out to not evoke any emotion whatsoever when seeing it again. Sure, I might miss something somewhere, but that still hurts a lot less then the mind-numbing and time-wasting alternatives.
I break out my TLR when someone has an interesting project that's well suited for it and I can bill them for it. My standing rate is 100/hr, one location, for film it's 200/hr. It's sort of a once a year thing nowadays, but, enjoyable. Takes me back to being a starving college kid doing this professionally, running around outside like a wild man capturing images for rent money.
It's a good balance now really, because doing dev management is far more lucrative, and I can afford to take the gigs that I want to take instead of taking every gig offered.
It is true though, bringing the film shoot intentionality to the digital world is the correct mindset, and sure modern digital can rip through 14 frames a second, but, if your moment happened at frame 8.5, you still can miss it, and are rewarded with 10-20x the amout of hard disk space to comb through hoping for a keeper.
I think one of the keys if you're going to do burst shooting of sports, concerts, even speakers is that you really have to do a quick rough cull that deletes most of the photos. For these kinds of things I do find bursting really helps get the best shots. (Yeah, you need to be setup as best you can but with dynamic motion you can't help but have a lot of duds.)
Yes, I use the chase jarvis method, run though and star everything that's usable first, purge zero stars, then run through and 2 star a single image from a burst that is the best of the group. Purge. Then look at your keepers and pick your deliverables.
If you're going to go into film photography then you should be building your own darkroom. That's not cheap. Not only for the equipment you need, but also for the dedicated space you need that also must be kept dust-free. Dust is the enemy of film photography. Hope you don't mind your fingers always smelling funky. Having grown up in a dark room and have been working in darkrooms since I was 4 years old, I don't look back on them with rose-tinted glasses.
I'll stick with today's digital darkroom. I've become a master at Gimp and I can do whatever I want with my photos. If I want a high-quality print then I can go around the corner to Walgreens and print what I want in whatever size I want. The difference now is I can focus on the photography, not so much the process and the equipment.
I actually think an instant camera fulfills this role better than a film one. By instant, I mean one that prints out the images immediately, like a Polaroid or Instax. It has two unique things compared to digital cameras: limited shots available (mostly because the film is so expensive) and that it instantaneous creates a physical object that is cooler than the typical printed photo. And since the photos are instant, you don't need to worry about getting the film developed.
It's a much easier on-ramp to photography than both film and digital cameras, in my experience.
Film is a very fun hobby that I recently began enjoying. I’ve never been into digital photography — the instant feedback kind of removed the magic for me. Film forces you to finish the roll (or you’re throwing money away) and that helps keep me engaged. When you get the scans back, you get excited to get out and shoot another roll.
I will say it’s expensive, but the real expense isn’t the stock or the gear but development.
I completely agree - on the cost front though, I find that the development costs are reasonable and actually developing black and white at home is relatively easy and cheap. But the film stock cost has increased quite prohibitively for me, especially compared to 2017/18 when I first started shooting film again.
If you shoot B/W home development is easily achieved - even C-41 is doable at home but it is more involved. Of course that only gets you negatives, you’ll either need to scan them yourself, pay for it, have an enlarger to make photographic prints, etc…
Ordering the 25 or whatever rolls of slide film and processing envelopes was sort of a ritual for me before a big trip. The last time was in 2006. It was around the time that Kodak was winding down its processing operation and about half the rolls disappeared into the ether somewhere.As I recall, Kodak couldn't find them but they eventually appeared in the mail a couple months later. A batch of to-be-processed film presumably got misplaced somewhere in the course of transferring facilities.
A) I kind of think to myself: “Is this picture worth a dollar?”
B) I kind of think to myself: “Is this picture worth my time?” Is this picture worth stepping out of what we are experiencing and doing the photographer thing.
Compare:
A) There is also a surprise factor and time machine effect with film that is impossible to replicate with digital cameras (though some have tried). When I get a roll of film developed, I have essentially no idea what I’m going to get back.
B) There is also a surprise factor and time machine effect with digital. I don't preview or edit images on camera. Weeks can pass before I upload to a computer. When I upload a memory card I have essentially no idea what I’m going to see.
Compare:
A) And, again, because shooting film is so expensive, I usually only take a couple pictures on any given outing.
B) And, again, because being fully in the experience is valuable, once I've chosen to do the photographer thing I take as many pictures as that needs.
If you're a serious photographer who's only shot digital, shooting film for some 'burner' shoots will improve your photography significantly. Film is a much more intentional process, you have to pay attention to light and composition at a very deep level before you capture an image. That practice improves technique that leaks over into the digital realm as well. Typically, when you go back, you take fewer photos but more of them are usable, and those that are usable are better overall.
Also taking fewer photos has the side benefit of improving ingress/processing time which are non-trivial if you're taking photos for a living.
Don't get me wrong, there's a time to motor drive f8 and get the shot, just in most cases it's better to not.
This is a bunch of retro-grouch reverse-snobbism hogwash.
Buy a digital interchangable lens camera and make a conscious effort to both shoot a lot (and be willing to purge stuff, don't become a packrat) but also spend time experimenting and focusing on getting a particular shot or style of shot as best you can, technically first, and then artistically.
People who lack the discipline to be "intentional" without being forced to by the medium will not have the discipline to a)take the notes required so they can later understand how and why things didn't work, and b)shoot film long enough to actually learn the technical skills needed to then focus on artistic skills.
They'll find it frustrating because they'll get back a bunch of badly exposed, blurry shots and have no idea why. It might not even be their fault, because labs fuck up developing all the time, film can be bad (and its performance varies with temperature, age, etc) and film cameras can be horribly unreliable or broken and you have no way of telling unless you take it for repair.
Even the most serious, dedicated, methodical beginner will find it all exhausting unless they're practically autistic.
Digital is superior for serious beginners because beginners more than anything need to actually just go and shoot lots of photos, often...and know what when wrong when things don't work. And they need a minimum number of variables to keep track of.
If it's a film camera, they'll "save" the film, and worse, by the time they develop a roll, they won't remember anything about what they were doing.
None of these problems exist with digital. Not only are frames essentially free, and not only are the cameras nearly perfectly reliable - you can instantly see what did or did not work, and try again. Or try multiple things, and see immediately how it worked out.
You get complete metadata ranging from aperture and shutter speed, usually lens data, and various modes the camera was in and nowadays often even including location.
It becomes trivial to pop open your photo editing program and search for photos taken with a particular lens and effortlessly compare them down to the pixel, see histograms, etc.
Further, film is fucking terrible on a technical level; 35MM dSLRs surpassed it nearly two decades ago in nearly every technical capacity; micro 4/3rds / APS-C surpassed full-frame 35MM as well quite a while ago. Film has terrible dynamic range, resolution isn't very good except for expensive and low-sensitivity film...and usable ISO levels for natural light have terrible resolution. Forget about trying to shoot indoors unless you have some sort of lighting equipment, and that's a whole entire level of additional complexity.
If you're an experienced photographer who wants an extra challenge from film, fine.
But stop telling beginners film is superior. It is not, in any way/shape/form. It has not been for two decades.
> This is a bunch of retro-grouch reverse-snobbism hogwash.
The advice isn’t bullshit, but neither is it some technique that will “improve your photography significantly.”
People who draw will do all sorts of weird exercises to develop their skills. This includes targeted practice, and yes, digital artists will sometimes practice with pen and paper. I see that practice as being kindred with the photographers who shoot on film as an exercise.
Mostly, it just encourages you to spend more effort visualizing the end result before you press the shutter release on your camera. It’s not some powerful technique to unlock your skills, but neither is it snake oil or hogwash. It’s easy to get stuck in habits, and one of the habits you can get into in photography is to just take a ton of pictures, hoping that one of them will look good. Maybe you just keep taking pictures and making adjustments until you get the right picture. Spending some time with film just forces you to break the habit. It would be nice if you could just tell somebody to slow down and think about what they’re doing, but we’ve got these messy human brains which don’t always follow our instructions as well as we’d like.
> Even the most serious, dedicated, methodical beginner will find it all exhausting unless they're practically autistic.
We used to teach film photography to ordinary high school students, maybe age 15 or so. I don’t think our current generation of high school students is substantially different.
> Film has terrible dynamic range…
This depends on the type of film you use. B&W film has phenomenal dynamic range. Color negative film has excellent dynamic range. Color positive film has narrow dynamic range.
If you shoot slides, you have to be damn precise with your shots. B&W negatives are very forgiving as long as you don’t underexpose them too much†. The dynamic range of B&W film is probably higher than the capacity of your lens to produce a high-contrast image. If you took pictures pointing your camera into a laser beam, or pointing into the sun, your picture would get overwhelmed by flare.
†Likewise, digital is very forgiving as long as you don’t overexpose.
You seem to have missed the point of my post entirely.
You also seem very hung up on 'digital is superior' which, yeah, no shit, never even insinuated it wasn't, so I don't really know what you're on about.
Also I specifies the target group for this advice, which was not 'beginners', you made that up yourself.
Truth is, film is worse, and that makes it harder, and it makes it fun to learn. Sure you can do the same digitally, but you're not forced to do so, which means the temptation to return to old habits is very high.
Don't get me wrong, I bring a dslr with me on every film shoot, I use it as a light meter and as a failsafe. Intitially, I just brought a slide rule that I made for estimating exposures and I got very good at it. Nowadays, I can look at a scene and easily be within a half stop just guessing, keep/cull ratio is probably 1/4, versus before it was easily 1/40.
Call that 'retro grouchyness' all you'd like, it works, and it has worked for everyone I've convinced to do it so far, but by all means, build yourself a scarecrow and complain loudly that you disagree with someone on the internet.
> you take fewer photos but more of them are usable
I need to take more photos of the same scene but from different angles — higher, lower, closer, … work the scene.
How will limited film shots help (force) me to do that?
> look at a scene and easily be within a half stop just guessing
SLR & DSLR meter exposure: what's the advantage of guessing?
(The blog post author apparently used a light meter smartphone app.)
> keep/cull ratio
Seems like I take fewer photos and keep more of them because a) I don't feel a need to keep making the same photos b) I've figured out how to make many of the photos I like to make.
> Sure you can do the same digitally, but you're not forced to do so
White balance & "M" at lowest-ISO & raw & don't try to preview / edit on camera.
High ISO is one of the most under-appreciated benefits of digital. B&W film topped out at 400 (Tri-X and HP5) which could be pushed to about 1600 though it started to show both significant grain and loss of shadow detail at that point. Color slide films were really suboptimal once you got above 100.
Even my somewhat older digital cameras can easily handle around 3200 or so without much noise.
Sounds like he thinks the benefits of film are its physical limitations and expense, but those limitations could always be emulated for digital shots too.
Does film generally look better than a pre-processed raw digital photo? If so, that'd be a better selling point to me. Not having to master fiddling with clunky post-processing software - much more appealing than, "film is better because each shot costs a dollar, I can only take 36 shots instead of 2,000, and I enjoy the 2-weeks-later surprise of the results."
Also wish they would disclaim that the links in the article are affiliate links, quite impolite not to.
> Does film generally look better than a pre-processed raw digital photo?
Under typical circumstances, no. Even digital JPEG is better than film, most of the time.
There are some exceptions. Negative film retains details even when overexposed, unlike digital. Medium format or large format film is a lot less expensive that medium format digital, but you need to take pictures carefully and use slow film to take advantage of the difference. Slides still look amazing in-person—they have better contrast than typical monitors, and typical side projectors / light boxes can get pretty bright.
Professional photographers back in the day would deliver slides as their finished product. In one workflow, you don’t do any post-processing on the slide at all—you scan it in, you print it out, and you make sure that the colors in the print match the colors on the slide. You have to get the picture right in-camera, and then you’re done.
>Does film generally look better than a pre-processed raw digital photo?
"Better" is subjective. It can probably look a bit different; some Hollywood directors still shoot on film. However, it's really hard for me to make the case that 35mm film is objectively better than full-frame digital with equivalent lenses etc. (And a lot of individual film characteristics can be emulated in post-production.)
(I'm sure someone could make an argument for 4x5 film and the corresponding camera which gives you very precise focus control.)
My Mom never left! She has a cell phone but still uses an old point and click film camera (at least it has autowind and doesn’t use the old lever to advance the film). We keep trying to convince her that paying for film and development isn’t such a good thing, but she is set in her ways. The grandkids at least are amazed when she brings it out. She even has a laptop and a desktop computer where she could store the photos. She has a kindle, a tablet, and a phone. She can email, text, FaceTime, etc. But she simply won’t take pictures with a phone.
We make photo books for every vacation and every year. We leave them stacked up on the coffee table and the kids love looking back through them.
We are old enough that we used film cameras for the first 10-15 years of our marriage. But at a certain point we digitized all of our old negatives and then threw the physical photos and negatives away. They take up way too much space.
I've had a couple of photo books made but I print very little. No room on the walls and I don't really need more physical "stuff." And while various things can happen to physical prints, I expect that most families don't really have a way to systematically pass down digital artifacts.
We have about 3 terabytes of family photos and videos. They are stored both on a local hardrive and on a cloud backup. They are probably the most irreplaceable thing we own. But I haven’t really figured out how to make them available to all the kids at some point. They know about the physical drive, but I’m not sure how to pass on the account information for the cloud backup. I don’t really want that information in my will right now since I’m not ready for the kids to access it and they have copies of the will.
Assuming you're willing to share the photos themselves today, probably some sort of rotating trading of USB drives? Provides redundancy too and 8TB or whatever drives are pretty cheap.
My main reason for going in the opposite direction and switching from DSLR to mirrorless is giving other people satisfaction of a perfect photo where everyone's faces are well lighted and in focus, action shots are frozen at the perfect moment and there are no unwanted people in the background. It's not clear to me that personal satisfaction with film's disciplining factors on myself will be able to overcome shortcomings for others. Anyone has related experiences one way or the other?
Film used be about a steady-stream of operational costs, amortizing film, processing and printing over many years.
Digital has always been about huge up-front costs of cameras and computer processing.
Film purchase and processing now have scanned added on, and all are getting painfully expensive, not to mention the surge in camera prices as TikTok decides which camera is flavour of the month. I can no longer decide to buy a Contax G2 backup body cheaply, so lucky I did it a long time ago.
Photography has always been an expensive hobby, plus ça change
Film photography, for me, is the most affordable way to get into medium/large format photography. Not really excited with 35mm because full frame bodies are getting more affordable.
On the other hand, the price of used GFX (50S, 50R) bodies are also getting more affordable. Yes I know some people consider it only "slightly bigger than FF and not true MF". Well, more than enough for me. And of course Hasselblad XD or Phase One system is definitely not in my range.
I still shoot a lot on film. I shoot a lot for publication and because of that, I really can't edit individual photos prior to using them, so a lot of what I do to get the 'look' I want comes down to film stock and how I use it.
Honestly, it ends up being a lot more time efficient than fiddling around with images in Photoshop or Lightroom. :)
Yes, definitely more expensive than digital, but you can get some pretty nice film cameras for next to no money, which is nice.
So much this. Some years ago I was deep in the post-processing rabbit hole (and printing - thanks, Nick Brandt) and at one point after spending like 5 hours in PS I thought “why the hell am I doing this?” and never looked back. There’s something very freeing about giving yourself over to your materials, framing, and exposure, and being delighted by the results even if they aren’t exactly what you expect. Digital post is like Ansel Adams level darkroom work, and I just don’t enjoy being so exacting.
>Digital post is like Ansel Adams level darkroom work, and I just don’t enjoy being so exacting.
Doesn't have to be though. You can go into Lightroom, apply some standard presets, maybe crop, see what autoexposure does and maybe tweak a bit, and maybe apply some effects preset, done. Maybe a couple minutes. (Yes, I sometimes spend more time but that's pretty much my good enough default workflow. Entering metadata and culling usually takes about as much time.)
I was mostly not that exacting when I was printing B&W either. The yearbook did use photos I shot for the paper but they didn't really want me printing because I just wasn't into the spending 4 hours on a print.
That was evident from your comment and the reason I didn't pose the question to you.
You are hardly "giving yourself over to your materials, framing, and exposure, and being delighted by the results even if they aren’t exactly what you expect."
One aspect of vintage film photography that I haven't seen discussed much here is the connections that can be with family members, local community members, and strangers over film cameras and photos.
Since taking up film photography, I've had countless conversations with shopkeepers, fellow concert-goers, line-mates, and all manner of other folks whom I'd likely have simply ignored if not for the shared connection of the vintage camera around my neck. At a recent concert, I had a ten minute conversation with one of the security bag-checkers about my Canon; he had been a concert photographer in the 70s/80s and shared some of his experiences & tips for shooting shows. While eating a recent breakfast out, my server asked about the camera sitting to the side of our table and we struck up a conversation about photography and family heirlooms (this camera had been passed down from a family member). For some reason, vintage cameras seem to foster a connection that can span age and generational gaps.
Film photography has also been a source of connection to older family members and a gateway to unlocking and sharing memories that may not have otherwise seen the light of day. Conversation naturally starts with the modern film hobby and progresses quickly until photo albums are strewn about the kitchen table and old photo equipment litters the floor. Like many other commenters here have said, film photos have a knack for capturing "real" moments that embrace the ephemeral nature of photography - goofy poses, blurry photos, and candid moments. These moments tell us so much more about our friends and family members and shake memories loose from the depths of time. Digital photos can replicate some of this, but I find that their ubiquity leads to fatigue more often than contemplation.
Folks are right to complain about the cost and inconvenience of buying and developing film, but we as film photographers have the privilege of supporting small, local businesses that are dedicated to their craft and to the film community. In addition to the livelihood these businesses provide to their owners, film shops can also cultivate an in-person community around the hobby that makes the experience much richer for those involved. We recently had a new film store open in my neighborhood, and it's been fun browsing their film stock while chatting with other photographers who've stumbled into the store. If I'm going to be paying $15 for a roll and $20 to get it developed, I'd like to see that money support a local small business.
If you really want slow and inconvenient and expensive, that will eventually lead you to a large-format camera. A good day out with the Wista might not end up with enough shots to fill the Jobo tank (6 shots).
My pal is OBSESSED over making a book of 8 x 10 Polaroids. Has been talking about it for years.
He is planning on getting:
Intrepid 8 x 10 view camera
8 x 10 film holders
Changing bags
Polaroid film next time it's in production
Two lenses of unknown focal length
Light meters
Polaroid Film Processor
Indeed, I paid less for my Wista VX than my Hasselblad 503. Even the lenses were cheaper (all second-hand, of course). 4x5 film is not cheap these days, fortunately I have a good supply in the freezer. DIY processing is a must with 4x5, it's way too expensive to send out.
I grew up with analog photography. I still have my darkroom equipment (but haven’t used it in a while). I used to develop BW films and prints and even color slides. Here are some random thoughts:
- yes, film shots, specially color film shots can be amazing “out of the box” it’s like a great lightroom filter that’s just there; some of my favorite shots were shot on ektar
- developing film and prints is really a great hobby, i used to shot over summer and then develop in long winter nights… definitely keeps you off of social media
- there’s lots of experiments you can do… different developers, processes, lots to explore
- developing prints is a lot of work, at least it was for me. getting exposure and contrast right is hard. it could take me the whole evening to produce one print
- when a print is good, it is amazing. the level of detail you get, specially with slow films (iso 25) is really something else. of course, if you go MF or LF, even more so (some say that top 35mm lenses are probably better than LF lenses, but still nothing beats the shades you get on LF)
- I feel like my prints, even if they are not very good, are my creation. I’ve never felt the same of much better digital prints that come out of my inkjet
- chemicals are messy and you should dispose of them at your dangerous waste disposal (could cost you)
- advanced darkroom techniques require larger formats (like unsharp mask) - i’ve never done it. once you go digital, it’s hard to be happy with lesser results.
- some techniques require dangerous chemicals, but is trivial in digital
- photos of masters from the past would not be considered anything special today, expectations have shifted
- ansel adams was better engineer than photographer. his approach was very technical. of course, what he did was amazing at the time - you can’t imagine what it takes to hike Yosemite with a LF camera! he was successful because nobody else did it (and his technical excellence of course).
- focusing is a problem with film cameras. even the best cameras will have front/back focus. it was normal back then, but today, expectations are different
- everything that could have been done has been done on film
- future is in exploring new things, like ansel mounted his camera on the top of his car to get a novel perspective - today this novelty are drones, tomorrow it will be something else
- stereoscopic photography is unutilised (it’s an old film invention)
- i haven’t shot film for a few years now; i have a great full frame EVF, but I don’t use it much, either
I'm pretty sure this ridiculous nonsense is why people give me crap for carrying a film camera with me everywhere I go, then they relax and apologize when I tell them it's just a personal choice and obviously doesn't make sense for almost anybody these days.
I have Nikon SLR's that have been sitting in the bag for 20 years. I have Cannon DSLR's that see light a couple times a year. I have a GoPro that sees the abuse that an ex-skater, ex-snowboarder, ex-surfer, does to his equipment through no fault of his own.
My issue with film cameras even back in the 90s was the varying quality of film developers to get your photos and the turn around time. Not to mention the photo shop looking at all your photos.